Most of these homey baked goods begin with a similar pattern: preheat the oven, grease a pan, round up a few dry ingredients and then sift them together.

It was only recently—while baking a cake from a new cookbook—that I gave sifting much thought. I realized that when a recipe calls for sifting, I often reach for a whisk instead, thinking—since many recipes instruct to whisk together dry ingredients—the two techniques are equally effective at breaking up clumps in dry ingredients. So why sift flour when whisking seems quicker, less fussy, less messy, and more modern? With its open balloon-like shape, shouldn’t a whisk provide the same blending and aeration as a sifter?

I turned to two experts for the answer. Karen DeMasco, pastry chef and cookbook author, and Katherine Yang, a New York City-based pastry chef and owner of Gigi Blue.

“I am totally a whisker—I only sift if it's truly necessary,” DeMasco says. “In most cases, whisking will combine your dry ingredients nicely and keep you from having another dirty tool to wash.” Yang agreed: “The less steps I have to take, the better. Most small clumps can be broken up with a whisk or your fingers.” But, they also agreed that, sometimes, sifting flour is an unavoidable necessity.

When Is It Important to Sift Flour?

In some instances, the chefs concurred, sifting is worth the added step—and not just when it comes to run-of-the-mill flour. Cake flour, almond flour, baking soda, confectioners' sugar, and cocoa powder tend to form clumps, either in their unopened packages or once they’re exposed to air. As DeMasco put it, “It's terrible to skip the sift only to find a pocket of dry cocoa in your cake!” To save repeated sifts, when opening a new box of baking soda, she sifts the whole thing and puts it into another container. Once that's done, she says, “you don't have to sift it each time you use it.”

Yang follows a simple protocol, “If I'm folding dry ingredients into a [delicate] batter [such as angel food cake], I generally sift. If I'm beating dry ingredients into a batter [with an electric mixer], I don’t bother. With the beaters, the clumps tend to work themselves out.” She also offered a great pro tip: “If lumps appear in oil-based batters, you can strain the whole batter through a medium- or large-mesh sieve.”

Keep your sifter close, but your whisk closer.

Photo by Chelsea Kyle, food styling by Katherine Sacks

One other instance where sifting is imperative: if your recipe calls for 2 cups sifted flour (as opposed to 2 cups flour, sifted). The former means that the flour should be measured after sifting, while the later means that it should be measured first and then sifted. The differences in volume are more extreme that you might believe and can make or break some baked goods. Give the two methods a test run in your own home—weigh them out on a kitchen scale and you'll see what I mean. You may never ask "why sift flour?" again!

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Classic Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting

For birthdays, dinner parties, and celebrations, ditch the boxed mix and add this recipe to your repertoire. An egg yolk–only batter gives the cake a sturdier structure than a classic white cake and lends that iconic yellow color, while the milk keeps it moist. The all-American chocolate frosting couldn’t be easier to make and is the perfect way to bring the cake layers together.